Freaks and Geeks and Vampires
by trinfaneb
Summary: As if high school wasn’t bad enough already, Lindsay Weir becomes the Chosen and has to deal with the gravest threat a preBuffy Slayer can face. A Buffy and Freaks and Geeks crossover with guest appearances from Spike and Dru and other Sunnydalians.
1. Chapter 1

Freaks and Geeks and Vampires

This story has random bits of spoilers for little parts of pretty much all the seasons of Buffy and Angel and major spoilers for the entire run (one season-18 episodes) of Freaks and Geeks. If you are thinking about buying the Freaks and Geeks DVD set (the best DVD value for the money I've ever seen) then I recommend you watch all the episodes before reading this story. If you haven't done so or don't plan to, this story has enough background info on Freaks and Geeks so that hopefully you won't feel lost. has pictures of all the main characters from Freaks and Geeks.

All characters are the intellectual property of their respective creators, film companies, etc.; this story may not be sold or distributed on a profit-making basis. I welcome free distribution of the story, but please let me know if you are going to do it. trinfaneb at yahoo dot com.

This story is dedicated to Miss Kitty and Mickey-two cats that I dearly miss.

Excerpts from the Diary of Lindsay Weir

Chapter 1--July 1st, 1981

Welcome to the first page of my new diary and hopefully the beginning of my new life. My old diary wasn't quite full yet, but I've decided to start this new one to symbolize the start of my new existence. For those of you who can't be bothered to read about my old, boring life in my old diary, I'll give you some background information on me, my friends, and my family. Who am I kidding-- no one is ever gonna want to read this thing, but here goes:

My name is Lindsay Weir. I'm a rising junior at McKinley High School and live in a small suburb of Detroit. I'm five foot five with an average build and longish brunette hair. My father Harold owns a small sporting goods store and my mother Jean is a homemaker. They love me and are nowhere near as bad as some of my friend's parents (especially Kim Kelly's) but they still have a hard time adjusting to the course my life is taking. My brother Sam is a rising sophomore at McKinley. He and his friends Neal Schweiber and Bill Haverchuck are geeks, but they're okay. Sam can be a hyper little pest sometimes, but we don't really pick on each other and we can talk to one another, which is a lot better than most brothers and sisters I know.

Growing up, my best friend was Millie Kentner, who lives across the street from me. Millie is a sweet girl and really religious. We used to dress and talk alike, but now we aren't as close. We were mathletes together our freshman year, but I quit the Academic Decathlon team this past year except for the couple of weeks after I wrecked the family station wagon and reverted to my old, boring self. I studied like crazy and clawed my way up to the top spot on the team and kicked butt in a scrimmage, but I didn't like who I had become and went back to the freaks. The girls on the team could only accept me as one of them, but the freaks ended up liking me both as a mathlete and a fellow freak.

My friends the freaks are Daniel Desario, who's going out with Kim Kelly, and Nick Andopolis and Ken Miller. Kim and I had rocky start to our friendship, but now we're pretty close. Nick and I went out for awhile, but now we're just buds. We started going out mostly because I felt so sorry for him after he totally bombed his audition for drummer with the local rock group Dimension that I kissed him to try and make him feel better. Things kind of progressed from there until my mom broke up with him (long story). I'm actually more attracted to Daniel, but he's with Kim (at least when they're not having some kind of fight). Ken's a sarcastic guy, but basically not that bad. He's going out with a girl who's in the marching band. They had some kind of trouble at the end of this past school year and almost split up, but they made up. And I'm glad they did because I think they make a good couple.

A little more than a year ago I was happy to be lumped with Millie and others as one of the "safe girls." But then I started having these really violent dreams. It was always some young girl fighting some kind of monster. The girls beat the monsters most of the time, but eventually every one of them got killed. I was already depressed with this when my grandmother became gravelly ill. She and I had a close relationship and I was alone with her when she died. She was such a good person and so scared. Moments before she died, she told me she couldn't see any heavenly light or anything like that. She just ended.

All of this threw me for a loop. I stopped hanging out with my old friends and started socializing with the freaks in the smoking patios at school and under the bleachers on the football field. I remember that right before one of the last times I tried to get up the courage to hang with the freaks under the bleachers last year, I stopped Sam from getting beat up by a bully from around the neighborhood. It's a good thing that Alan White backed off because I wasn't bluffing. I would have torn him apart. Would have felt bad about it afterwards, but still would have done it. Sam forgave me for causing him to lose face in front of the bully and his friends and I later told him about what happened with grandma. I didn't mention the dreams though. Even he might think I was going psycho.

Enough about my depressing old life. Today I started out on a bus trip to Ann Arbor where I was supposed to spend two weeks at an Academic Summit at the University. It was supposed to be for the top one percent of students across the state, but to me it was just another competitive prison cell. I got off the bus before it got to the station and met Kim and my two new friends Laurie and Victor. They're deadheads and are following the band during the "Grateful Dead's" summer tour this year and Kim and I are tagging along in their hand-painted, hippie VW van. My parents are gonna freak, but this is what I want to do. I'll send them a postcard in the next day or so to let them know what I'm doing so they won't worry when they call my dorm at the University and find out I never checked in. I'll catch hell for awhile, but I don't believe in hiding from the consequences of my actions.

Hanging out with Nick and Daniel this year has really broadened my musical horizons. I've started to get into bands like "Led Zeppelin," "Rush," and "Pink Floyd." I even almost went to a "The Who" concert (against the express wishes of my parents, who freaked when they listened to the lyrics of "Squeeze Box"), but bailed at the last minute to stay home and hang out with Millie. She was going to go with me because she was trying so hard to fit in with the freaks and be my best friend again. I felt she was losing track of the person she really was. Luckily Kim Kelly stepped up and admitted that she had accidentally run over Millie's dog a few days earlier, which led to Millie staying home. Kim can be annoying and thoughtless sometimes, but she did a good thing then.

I didn't start getting into the "Grateful Dead" until a month or so ago when my high school guidance counselor Mr. Rosso let me borrow his copy of "American Beauty." I was depressed over having to go the Academic Summit this summer and he told me the album had helped him through some tough times. I listened to it over and over again and it gave me a measure of peace. Dancing around in my bedroom, I felt freer than I had in a long time. Then I started talking with Laurie and Victor and it wasn't too great a stretch to choose touring with the Dead over the Academic Summit. Especially when I realized Kim had never really been outside of the Detroit area and she was going to be stuck in town all summer with her deadbeat family. This would be our big adventure.

It was a big deal for me to get off that bus today. It must be my imagination, but when I took that last step to the pavement, it felt like I suddenly had the strength of five women. I practically floated to where Kim and the others were waiting with the van. It's already ten o'clock now and I'm writing this by flashlight. It'll be my turn to drive soon. I know I won't get sleepy and I'll drive all night to get us to Houston in time for the show. I'm seeing the Dead tomorrow-how cool is that?


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2--July 11th, 1981

Last night we saw the Dead onstage in St. Paul, Minnesota. They didn't play anything from "American Beauty," but it was still a good show. Hanging around with all these open, experiential people has been great. Laurie and Victor are in an almost constant state of bliss. Kim gets bored and snippy sometimes, but overall she's still much happier than she usually is. I feel like I've been able to take a much needed vacation from myself. Drugs don't have much attraction to me, although all my freak friends use to some extent. In an effort to experience this touring life a little more fully, I've started smoking the occasional joint. Last night's encore song, "Casey Jones," seemed to put everyone in a freewheeling kind of mood. When we got back to the van, Victor produced acid tabs from somewhere and we all dropped one, including Miss Former #1 Mathlete.

For the first couple of hours, we all engaged in some stimulating conversation that I promptly forgot. Then Victor, Laurie, and Kim wandered off to chase apparitions in the parking lot and I sat in the van and tried to become one with the universe or something. For some reason, I suspected that the acid wasn't having full effect on me.

Then someone opened the sliding van door to the accompaniment of sound waves that I could see rippling in the air like waves on a pond. When my eyes slowly tracked back to the open doorway, I saw a man with the most extra-ordinary blonde hair and a raven haired women with the most incredible cheekbones. The man was wearing a black leather jacket and the woman a white evening gown of the variety usually found in a 1930's movie.

When the man started speaking, my world closed in from mushy cacophony to crystal clearness. I still recall every word they said and every gesture they made even though I can't really remember much of what happened before or after. The act of concentrating so hard on them seemed to preclude me from having a conversation. It didn't seem to matter to them, though. The woman looked deeply into my eyes and moved her head back and forth and said, "Be in me." I felt myself going into a trance.

"Well pet, is she the one,?" the blonde said as he looked into my eyes. "If she isn't, then I'm not touching her. Remember that flower child at Woodstock? Afterwards I spent six hours looking at my bleedin' hand."

"The stars say she's the Chosen," the woman said after looking up into the sky for a couple of minutes. The man started to climb into the van, but she put her hand on his shoulder to slow him. "She doesn't know she's the cat and no longer the mouse. She's a constellation that hasn't been etched out by men yet."

"It's not like the Watchers to be so incompetent, but it happens, I guess," the man said as he lit a cigarette. "I'm feeling a bit peckish and was looking to get into a good ruckus. Looks like that won't be happening tonight. Do you want to take her love? I've already got two, you know."

"The heavens say she is not for us-she is meant for another-one that you owe a debt to."

"That ponce and his quest. No sport to it though. I guess it wouldn't hurt to get back in his good graces after all," the man said as he climbed into the van, grabbed my purse and rifled through it. "According to her school ID card, her name is Lindsay Weir and she goes to McKinley High."

"A star that fell from the heavens," the woman said with a faraway look on her eyes.

"I dearly love you, but sometimes I bloody well wish I knew what the hell you talking about," the man said as he threw my purse back into the van and leaned forward to address me. "Tonight's your lucky night luv, but it won't be that way for too long after we pass along our information. Maybe the next one will offer me a challenge. I don't fancy the cut of your green army jacket anyway. I think I'll stick with my duster. Maybe we can rustle up some Hell's Angels or something and have some fun after all. Come along pet," he said to the woman as he slammed the door shut.

I watched them walk off into the night for a few seconds, but then they disappeared from my vision as I fell into a deeper dream state. I don't remember what I dreamed, but it was very upsetting. When I woke up around noon, I felt terrible and half crazy. I'm trying to convince myself the cocky man and faraway woman weren't real. Suddenly I'm happy that Kim and I will be heading home after the show in East Troy, Wisconsin tonight. I also feel reassured when I find my driver's license in the glove compartment rather than in my purse where I thought I had left it.

I'm going to be grounded for at least a month after I get home, but I feel a lot better knowing those two unreal creatures couldn't possibly know exactly where I live. Laurie, Victor, and Kim are giving me worried looks. I'm passing it off as a bad reaction to the acid, but that's not the truth. I don't know the truth yet, but I have an awful sense of foreboding that tells me I won't like it when I finally do.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3--August 5th, 1981

I'm about to go stir crazy sitting in my room in these last weeks before school starts up again. Aside from a few, quick, mother chaperoned trips to the record store and public library, I haven't been out of the house since I got back from touring. My parents are really upset with me, especially my dad who's dead set on seeing me get into a good college. He's so upset he's even started back up with his "Where's Janis Joplin now?-dead!"and "Where's Jimmy Hendrix now?-dead!" tirades again. Thanks to talking with Nick during his "houseguest" phase this past spring, dad's added, "Where's John Bonham now?-dead!" to his repatoire.

Sam is being pretty sympathetic about all this, but sometimes I catch a little snigger on his face as he leaves to do something with Neal and Bill. But then, when he gets home I remind him how hard he worked to woo cheerleader Cindy Sanders last year only to drop her when she turned out not to be interesting enough for him. She was a freshman, how much personality did he expect anyway? But I have to admit that not thinking "The Jerk" is funny would be a big negative for anyone. At least he's getting some mileage from being the good kid in the house, but I know it won't be too long before he does something outrageous like getting pushed out of the boy's locker room and being forced to run through the crowded halls of the school naked as a jay bird. Then it'll be my turn to get some of that good child vibe.

I'm so bored that I was even secretly happy when Mr. Rosso came to visit me this afternoon. Happy at first anyway. I'd began to suspect that he had an ulterior motive for paying so much attention to me this past year. I even catch myself thinking that he's kind of attractive sometimes, but then I think back to the little talk he and I had about dating and sex where he causally admitted he has herpes. Lord, he can be so weird sometimes. But he has always been very supportive of me and is a much better musician than anyone in Nick, Daniel, and Ken's band, "Illusion." I do think he tries too hard to be "cool" and "with it." He should just face the fact that no teenager at McKinley is going to really respect him until they get out of high school.

"I've been meaning to give you back your 'American Beauty' album, Mr. Rosso, but I haven't been able to leave the house and..."

"That's not a problem, Lindsay," he said as he came in the room and sat down on the opposite end of the bed from me. "It was a gift from me to you. I have another copy. I'm glad you seem to have taken the songs to heart although it led to you missing the Academic Summit and making your parents upset."

"I still stand by my decision. If I can't do what I think is right, then what's the point to life, then?"

"I can respect that attitude, Lindsay. Myself, and I suspect many others, shared that view when we were at Berkeley protesting The War and getting tear gassed. But that's not really what I wanted to talk with you about."

"Then what do you do you want to talk about?" I said with what Neal called my "patented quizzical expression" on my face.

"I want to talk about your dreams. And your strength."

"What kind of dreams?" I asked.

"The kind where you see young girls fighting monsters. You still get them?"

"Yes, but how did you know that? I've never told anyone."

"I'll explain that in a moment, but the important thing I need to know is whether or not you got unnaturally strong around July 1st?"

"Yeah I did start to feel stronger around then."

"How strong?"

"Pretty strong. Our van got a flat outside St. Louis and we couldn't find the jack, so I lifted up the back and kept it up while Victor changed the tire. The others were kind of out of it at the time and didn't think too much of it, but I was hoping that it was some strange after effect of puberty or of all the strange, ahem, water we drank in the different cities."

"I think I know what you mean by water," Rosso said as he made quotation marks with his fingers, "but that's neither here nor there and the Woodstock alumni that I am, I shouldn't be talking anyway. I suspect you have undergone an unbelievably life-altering change, but to be sure, there is a ritual I need to perform."

"What kind of ritual?" I asked. I was beginning to get nervous.

"I'll say some words in different languages and mix some powders and if what I suspect is true, then a ball of light will float to you."

"What kind of ball of light?" I asked, getting even more nervous.

"It's not an actual ball, its just an illusion designed to help find special people. It won't hurt you at all."

"I'm not sure I want to go through with this."

"Have I ever let you down, Lindsay? I know you haven't always liked what I've done where you are concerned, but have I ever done anything that wasn't ultimately in your best interest?"

"No you haven't," I said, thinking back how he had defended me when Mr. Kowchevski accused me of helping Daniel cheat on a math test. Of course I had helped Daniel cheat, but that wasn't the point. "Okay, let's do it."

Rosso spent the next five minutes doing some mumbo jumbo with the contents of his leather poach. Then he spoke some foreign words and a small white ball of light appeared, hesitated for a few seconds, and then flew straight into my heart and disappeared. It hadn't hurt, but I was still gasping for breath when I asked, "Okay then, what am I?"

"You're the Chosen." Rosso said as he lowered his eyes and got a sad look on his face.

"Chosen to do what?"

"Chosen to be the Slayer-to face the monsters you dream about."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4--August 6th, 1981

I kind of freaked out after he called me the Slayer. I had never heard that appellation before, but it sounded right; sounded powerful and deadly. I asked him to leave and he did. I didn't get much sleep that night. In fact I hadn't gotten or really needed much sleep since I got off that bus. But yet I felt tired and worn out much of the time. There were now just too many hours in the day for me to indulge in my favorite past time of overanalyzing everything. I had hoped the tour would help me shake that habit, but now it had come back with a vengeance.

I was revisiting all my past and future sins this afternoon when my mother showed Rosso into my room again. He had used the excuse of bringing me some advance study materials for the SAT test to work on. Just what I needed on my summer break. I wanted it all to go away, but I couldn't turn my back on my problems. I had to ask the question.

"What does being the Slayer mean?"

As I suspected, I didn't like the answers I got over the next hour. At least the pressure of number one spot on the mathletes paled in comparison to my new responsibilities. I wanted desperately to doubt what he told me, but encountering those two creatures in St. Paul had utterly and deeply convinced me he was on the level. I was scared, but tried not to show it.

As I learned more about the Slayer and the Watchers, I asked how he had gotten involved in all this. He explained that his mother had become a divorcee before it became a quite acceptable thing to be and moved to England, where she met and wed a minor member of the English nobility. It turned out his new step-father's first wife had been killed in a most horrible manner by a vampire named Kakistos. She and her husband were Watchers. Their teenage son was head boy at the Watcher's Academy and naturally Rosso was expected to attend. Family tradition and all that.

Rosso attended the Academy for a few years and got a solid background in Watcher lore, but he knew he would never be cut out for fieldwork. He couldn't stomach the idea of being mentor to a girl who would most likely get killed before she got out of her teens. He would much prefer to be counselor to girls and boys who would have the chance to live. So he didn't shed too many tears when his mother and step-father broke up after four years and he moved back to the States with his mom.

At the beginning of the last school year Rosso had gotten a visit from his step-father. It seems the Watchers had identified me as a Potential Slayer. But they considered me a low-order probability to become the Chosen because of the late age I had manifested and because of my aura. They were strapped for Watchers to train all their high probability Potentials, so they asked Rosso to keep an eye on me since I did attend the school he worked at after all.

After the previous Slayer died in Australia at the exact moment I was getting off the bus in Ann Arbor, they searched high and low for the new Chosen, but their seers had an unusually hard time locating me. Finally they narrowed it down to the Detroit area and asked Rosso to determine if I was indeed the new Slayer or not.

Then Rosso offered me a choice. If I wanted, he would lie to the Watchers and tell them I wasn't the Chosen. But he warned me that it was highly unlikely I would ever be able to lead a completely normal life again. The Watchers wouldn't be fooled for long and vampires, demons, and other strange things seemed to be unconsciously attracted to the Slayer, no matter where she lived. Or maybe the Slayer was attracted to them-it was hard to tell.

"I don't like to admit it," Rosso wearily said, "but being trained by a Watchers is probably the safest course for you and your family. Especially since those two creatures seem to have a general idea of where you live. Sooner or later you're going to get some visitors, and they won't be the friendly types."

"I can feel that in my gut," I said as I got up and paced around her room. The blankets had gotten uncomfortably hot from me and Rosso sitting on them for so long. "Must be my new Slayer intuition," I said with a small laugh.

"Must be. I'll call the Council when I get home. I suppose they're already getting someone ready to come over."

"They'll send only one? Wouldn't more be better?"

"There's a long tradition of "One Slayer, One Watcher." More people would mostly mean more bodies you'd have to closely protect. Anyway I doubt they would get too many volunteers to work with an activated Potential. Its different when a girl becomes the Slayer after the Watcher has trained her for a year or two. Most Watchers would do anything for a Slayer they have come to care about. Just like I would do anything for you, Lindsay."

The warm feeling I got in my heart after he said that was the highlight of my day. I knew on an intellectual level that a teenager is naturally callous to authority figures (and just about anyone else) but the depth of his feeling really touched something inside me. So naturally I asked him to leave before ten seconds had gone by.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5-August 11th, 1981

Today I had my first training session with my new Watcher. His name is Brian Todhunter and he's English and taller and ganglier than Mr. Rosso, if that's possible. He's also younger than I expected. I asked about that and he assured me that he had fifteen years of training in addition to field experience watching over another Slayer. I was too chicken to ask what had happened to his previous Slayer.

I'd never liked P.E. class, so naturally I'm now stuck in the P.E. class from hell. And I owe it all to Mr. Jeffery Theodore Rosso. He sweet talked my parents into buying a story about Todhunter being an old friend who had just moved into town and who had beaucoup experience with troubled teens. Rosso invented some imaginary government grant that paid for Todhunter to become my tutor and "life coach" (Rosso assured us that term was eventually going to hit it big in California). At first I didn't mind because it got me out of the house.

But then I did start to mind because it took me to Mr. Rosso's house. Or actually his mother's house. More specifically the moldy basement of his mother's house. The two gents set up a training space for me and I got to hurdle boxes and duck under sawhorses and punch Todhunter and Rosso in the hands until my arms felt like they were going to fall off. Actually I didn't mind the part about punching Rosso so much. I minded even less the couple of times I missed the pads on his hands and zinged him in the shoulder. I was doing my best not to miss. Well at least I was trying fairly hard not to miss.

I wanted to get my hands on some wood (my goodness that sounds like a line from that porno film Daniel let Sam, Neil and Bill watch, doesn't it? I still can't believe Kim got me to sit through it with the theory that it would show me how a guy shouldn't do things). Anyway I wanted a stake in my hands. That's what I'd seen in all those old Dracula movies. Todhunter and Rosso just sadly shook their heads back and forth at the mention of Dracula and told me I would have to get most of that movie nonsense out of my head. They also told me I would have to earn the stake. When I had done well enough with basic skills like agility, defense, control, punching, and kicking, I could graduate to the stake.

When I got home tonight I was wiped out. But I was also a little impressed with myself. The old me would have been holding her stomach on the ground after thirty minutes of the training I had endured. Also if I wanted, I could toss Todhunter and Rosso around like rag dolls. I had never thought much about violence in the past, but it gave me some measure of confidence knowing that if push ever came to shove with any human, I wouldn't be the one that ended up on the floor.

I fell asleep almost immediately after I got home. But after a few hours I woke up. And started to overanalyze things so much so I had to start writing here in my diary to find some relief. This Slayer stamina is going to take some getting used to. A lot of things about this situation are going to take getting used to.

Before my grandmother died, I had some vague future plans about going to college and getting a job and maybe marrying some guy, but since then, the future hasn't seemed so bright to me. Four more years of studying after high school doesn't appeal much to me anymore and I was starting to be afraid that any job I found would soon become boring. And guys-I still didn't know what to think about that. Nick Andopolis was definitely not a good benchmark for a normal boyfriend.

More than a year ago I realized death was ultimately waiting for me, but now it wasn't some vague, bleak destination at the end of a long and winding road. It was a close, gaping chasm that I would have to continually try to avoid falling into. I kind of wish Rosso hadn't been so forthright with me about the fate of all Slayers. But I had to respect him for not pulling any punches. I suspected that if I was going to survive for any length of time as the Slayer, then I needed to wrap my head around my fate. Going into the fray with a half-assed mental attitude would likely get me killed.

But not dead like the two vampires I had seen in St. Paul. Todhunter told me that Slayers couldn't get turned (or "sired" in Watcher-speak) into vampires. It was a small relief knowing that my body wouldn't be walking around and killing after my soul had shuffled off to wherever it went to. It just now occurred to me that if vampires lost their soul and, in at least one case had been able to get them back, then death might not be the end after all. But I still couldn't accept the fact that the afterlife must be a good place. If so, then why all the pain and suffering on earth?

From my descriptions, Todhunter had been able to identify my two friends from St. Paul as vampires named Spike and Drusilla. They were quite a pair and I could tell by the look on the English Watcher's face that he considered it a miracle that they didn't kill me. I've begun to feel ashamed at how helpless I was before them. Life is full of situations one can't control, but I'm going to do my best to see that I'm as well trained as can be so I can exert as much control and power as possible the next time I meet something like Spike or Drusilla.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6-August 21stth, 1981

Today I learned I would be facing my first monster. I'm almost too nervous to make a diary entry, but I might as well get something done while I'm in my room not sleeping like I should be. Yesterday started out to be another day of training just like the last couple of weeks had been. I had graduated to the stake a couple of days before and now I was learning awareness and anticipation by dodging body blows while blindfolded. Let me tell you, broomstick handles can sting when they hit you just right. A couple of times it was all I could do not to grab the sticks from Todhunter and Rosso's hands and shove them someplace even more dark and dank than Rosso's basement.

Training was tough, but at least now I had a reward to look forward to. I had successfully bribed Rosso into letting me see my friends for thirty minutes or an hour after every training session. I probably wouldn't have gone through with my threat to tell mom and dad the truth of what was going on, but it seems I bluffed well enough to convince the guidance counselor. I guess hanging out with Kim Kelly has been educational in some ways.

It was lonely not being able to see my friends for so long. I couldn't even use the phone to call them. I would gladly stake a few vampires if that would get me a phone in my room. Maybe someday in the far future we'll have communicators like the ones on "Star Trek." That reminds me to hate Sam for getting me dragged along to that sci-fi convention where mom had paid that artist to paint the whole family's individual portraits. What was even worse was that they were now proudly displayed in our living room. When a "Star Trek" fan artist paints your picture, the results aren't pretty.

Most days I met the gang in Nick's basement where we caught up on what each of us had done over the summer while Rosso, Todhunter, and Mr. Andopolis chewed the fat upstairs. A military man, a Vietnam War protestor, and a slightly fey Englishman having a conversation. What I wouldn't love to be a fly on the wall for that. Anyway, Daniel and Kim had broken up right before we went on the Dead tour. So Kim had been a free woman. Let me tell you, a few hippies got lucky in the back of that VW van. I'm still trying to block out some of it. Of course she and Daniel got back together a couple of weeks after we got back. During Kim's absence, Daniel had tried again to score with that punk drop-out chick with the spiked hair who worked at the convenience store, but his skin's intolerance for having sharp metal objects poked through it was a relationship breaker as far as she was concerned.

Ken and Amy were getting pretty serious. It was amazing to see him act so lovey-dovey in public. Nick had broken up with Sara after she had come on to Eugene the Disco Magician after that guy had beat Nick in a dance contest at the disco lounge in the bowling alley. But Sara had given Nick her heartfelt "I've loved you since the sixth grade" spiel again and he'd gotten back together with her. But things weren't the same since the disco lounge had closed and been replaced by foxy boxing. Then Nick watched Daniel's porno film and saw that Eugene was one of the stars. He confronted Sara about that and she'd admitted that she'd had a fling with the disco magician during the time she and Nick had been broken up. Nick cared for Sara, but he just couldn't handle the thought of her and Eugene starting a love train together. She was still broken up about it, but Nick wouldn't give in.

In fact he'd come back to the freak fold and given up disco for rock again. He stayed off the pot and bought a simple drum set (no 29 piecers for him anymore) and made a bargain with his dad about not practicing at certain times (especially while "60 Minutes" was on) and bringing up his grades in return for not getting his drums sold again. Nick continued with the drum lessons my dad had inspired Nick to take and he was actually getting better. The freak band still sucked as a whole, but Nick was a lot better. And now that I was able to come by, the whole gang was together again. Just in time for school to begin in a few days.

I didn't tell them about the Slayer stuff. Todhunter had been quite specific in drilling into my head that family and friends were not to get involved in Slayer activities. It just lead to distraction for the Slayer and death for their loved ones. I wasn't too sure about that, but I didn't want to see anyone put into danger on my account, so I played along.

When Rosso and Todhunter took me home that evening, we ran into Sam, Neal, and Bill in the driveway. They were abuzz about something that had happened. I still remember what they said as we all stood in a circle in the driveway and talked:

"Lindsay, you remember that bully, Alan White?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, did the three of you try to fight him again or something?" I asked.

"No he's dead. He was riding that funky looking banana seat bike of his and picking on a poor rising freshman when a guy on a motorcycle came out of nowhere and ran Alan over."

"That's terrible," I said. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that his death wasn't normal.

"Yeah its awful," Neal said. "But the weird part is that the freshman says the rider on the motorcycle was headless"

"Whoa, wait a minute there, you're telling me he didn't have a head?" Mr. Rosso asked as he leaned back and threw his hands to his sides in a gesture of disbelief.

"Yeah," Bill said in that disconnected way of his. "See Neal, I told you that story about the farmer who strung up piano wire on his land to behead dirt bike riders wasn't a fairy tale. Now one of them has come back from the dead or something."

"Wait a minute," Neal shot back. "I'm sure it was just some guy dressed up in a costume that covered his head. Something like what they used in that headless motorcycle rider episode of 'Kolchak the Night Stalker.' You can tell it was fake up close, but it might look real from a distance."

"Well then, how do you explain the sword?" Bill asked. "The kid said it was just floating in the air without touching anything and took a swing at Alan on the first pass. Then Alan panicked and got off his bike and started to run. That's when he got hit by the motorcycle."

"You know, that sounds like the dancing sword," Sam said.

"The dancing sword from the Dungeons and Dragons game, the one that fights with you as long as you are a certain distance from it?" Neil said as he crossed his arms on his chest and gave Bill a cock-eyed look. "Get real."

"Lets just stop all the wild theories for a minute," Mr. Rosso said. "I assume the police are at the accident scene. Do you know if anyone has talked with Alan's parents yet."

"I don't know, Mr. Rosso," Sam said. "I feel bad for Alan. He was a bully and almost put Bill in a coma that time he put a peanut in his sandwich knowing full well that Bill was deathly allergic to them. But Alan wasn't such a bad guy I guess."

Bill continued, "Yeah, Alan came to my bedside at the hospital when he thought I was sleeping and apologized to me and told me how he thought me, Neal, and Sam were so cool. He wouldn't admit to it afterwards and wouldn't hang out with us when we asked him to, but still it happened."

"I don't know how to feel about all this." Sam said as he stared off into empty space.

"It's a difficult thing to deal with, at any age Sam. But just hang in there and we'll all get through it together," Mr. Rosso said. "I'll go by his parent's house and see if there's anything I can do. We'll have an assembly about how to deal with this tragedy when school starts back up."

"Ok, Mr. Rosso," Sam said as he and Bill and Neal went inside the house.

Todhunter had been hanging back, but now stepped up and said, "You thinking what I'm thinking, Jeffery?

"I believe so, Brian," Mr. Rosso answered in a weary tone. "I'll check with my brother-in-law Rick and see if he or anyone else on the police force knows what's going on."

"Yes, I do believe that would be a wise course of action," Todhunter said. "Lindsay, can you sneak away from your house tomorrow night?"

"I guess I could climb out the window, but my mother might look in on me or something during the night."

"No worries. I'll cast a warding spell on your doorway. It should make others at least fifty percent more unlikely to want to approach it after the sun has gone down."

"Okay," I said while wondering what Kim Kelly would do to have a similar spell cast on her bedroom door. Then I wished that the spell had been in place when Nick had been staying at our house last year spring after he'd had a fight with his dad over the drum kit. If it had, then Nick probably wouldn't have woken me up and talked to me through the door and then I wouldn't have come out to investigate the racket he made after he stubbed his toe on the coffee table on the way back to the couch. I was still trying to block out the sight of him standing there shirtless in those red, white, and blue bikini underwear.

"Good then," Todhunter said. "Lindsay, I believe you shall be getting some sword instruction tomorrow afternoon. Does that sound right Jeffery?" Mr. Rosso nodded.

"Then you should be looking forward to your first patrol tomorrow night, Lindsay. It's a little earlier than I would have liked, but you are progressing well in your training and this headless rider chap is likely not as tough as a vampire. In any case, Mr. Rosso and I will be there to back you up and provide research assistance. Get some sleep tonight, Miss Weir, you've a big day ahead of you," Todhunter said before walking off.

Rosso gave me a false cheerful look and followed. Tomorrow was going to be a long day. If I survived it.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7-August 23nd, 1981

Well I faced the monster. And survived. If I didn't then who would be writing this entry? Anyway this afternoon I got a crash course in sword fighting from Todhunter. It turns out they are no where as easy to knock out of someone's hand as the movies makes it out to be. Therefore you have to fight to kill rather than to disarm. I'm not sure I can stick a piece of cold steel into someone's body.

But Todhunter counseled me to think of it as some thing's body, not someone's. The monsters I would be facing didn't have souls, so I shouldn't think of them as people. If they did once have souls, then they would ultimately be thankful to me for putting their body out of its misery and ending the suffering it caused to others. I wasn't sure I completely bought this, but it was a pretty good working assumption to go by until I had more experience. In fact I was getting into this venture more whole-heartedly than I ever would have thought possible. I guess I've been kind of rudderless and looking for some new direction. It wasn't what I expected, but it is something. And it doesn't involve backsliding into my old life or conforming to the generally accepted rules of society. I'm a true outsider now rather than some aimless poser and I revel mentally in that status.

When I saw the gang today after training, I sort of said my goodbyes to them in case I didn't make it. I told each of them something that I liked about them and how much they all meant to me. Ken was kinda shocked that I admired how much he loved Amy and the whole gang was generally kinda freaked, especially Kim. She could sense something was up, but I didn't reveal anything. Sam, Neal, and Bill's friendship was based on the motto "no secrets." We didn't have that kind of code in our friendship, but it still didn't feel right to be keeping so much from my friends. But it was the way things had to be, I suppose.

I went home that evening and after saying veiled goodbyes at the dinner table, I basically just lay in bed and stared at the ceiling until midnight came along and I opened my window and silently jumped out into the yard and walked to where Rosso and Todhunter were waiting for me in a car at the end of the block. We drove to the cemetery, with Rosso explaining that his brother-in-law Rick had mentioned that the caretaker for the cemetery had complained about someone doing doughnuts on a motorcycle around a grave last night. A grave for a young man who had been beheaded in a motorcycle accident in Georgia a couple of weeks ago. His family lived in this area, so that's where he was buried.

Todhunter had done some research and found that zombies sometimes obsessively visited the places where they were originally buried. He explained that if we were dealing with a zombie, then someone out there had called it up from the grave and was making the creature do its bidding. But the master might be inexperienced, which would explain why the zombie could re-visit its grave. If that was so, then the zombie would follow its primal instinct to kill whenever threatened. It wouldn't wait for any instructions from its master.

I didn't like going to the cemetery. Todhunter had told me that much of my future patrolling would be done in cemeteries because that's where most vampires and many demons liked to hang out. I didn't mind cemeteries in general that much, but it was hard to go back to this one because it was where my grandmother was buried. Aside from a few visits the whole family had made, I hadn't been back to her grave since the funeral. It would probably do me some good to tell her things about my life like I had done when she was alive, but I was afraid that if I visited her grave too much, my mental image of her as lively and vibrant would be eclipsed by the image of her as a corpse. It was already starting to happen. My memories of the night she died were burned into my mind and hurt like a tongue touching a cold sore every time I thought about it.

We soon got to the outskirts of Chippewa and then to the cemetery. Rosso parked the car back in the woods so it wouldn't be too noticeable and we started walking towards the zombie's grave. I had a sword in my hand and a stake in one of the pockets of my army jacket. Rosso and Todhunter each carried collapsible metal poles as well as Slayer kits packed away in old doctor's bags. There were a lot more crypts and statues in the cemetery than I had remembered seeing before. Most people didn't take much notice of the culture of death that underlies society, but now it was my job to police that culture for things that shouldn't be there.

We got to the correct grave and saw the chewed up grass where a motorcycle had done doughnuts. The ground was extremely torn up and Todhunter speculated that the zombie had been here more than once. There was nothing else to do, so we waited. I hoped I would get more used to this part of the job, but it seemed to take forever for time to pass. I knew it was just my nervousness, but I jumped a little every time some creeping or flying insect touched me.

Finally around two o'clock, we heard the distant approaching whine of a motorcycle. As it got closer I took a few warm-up swings with the sword to get my blood pumping and Todhunter and Rosso extended their metal poles to their full ten foot length. Finally the droning of the motorcycle sounded like it was right on top of us. It was strange not to see any headlights, but Todhunter had explained that this zombie obviously didn't have regular vision and probably saw as well in the dark as in the day. That vision was probably fairly blurry and the zombie was likely not to have the best control over its motor functions. At least that was what we hoped.

Then the zombie came whizzing by me. I was too slow to swing my sword, but so was the zombie. All I could see was a black headless form on the motorcycle, but the whiff of decaying flesh I had gotten was very strong. It laid on the brakes and slid sideways into a tree. But it quickly righted itself and came back for another pass.

This time I swung my sword towards the approaching zombie and its floating sword swung back at me. Our swords clashed and the momentum behind the zombie sword knocked me on my rear. I heard grass churn as the motorcycle made a tight turn for another pass, but Rosso and Todhunter stepped up and waved their poles around to attract the zombie like a matador would a bull. Todhunter tried to wedge his pole in the spokes of the dirt bike as it passed, but the zombie's sword knocked the pole aside. Rosso was a little more tentative and not in position to really do anything.

I picked myself up off the ground and stood in a defensive stance as the zombie came straight for me. At the last second I ducked to one side and swung my sword. I felt the zombie sword slice where my head had been. My own sword made a glancing blow to the engine of the bike. The zombie made another turn and came back again and this time I stood my ground and swung as hard as I could for the zombie sword. Out the corner of my eye, I saw Todhunter thrusting his pole towards the wheel of the bike. I was knocked on my ass again, but I saw the zombie sword fly away from the dirt bike as Todhunter's pole went through the spokes of the front wheel of the bike and the zombie went cartwheeling through the air.

As I got up, I saw that the transferred shock of his pole stopping the bike had knocked Todhunter against a headstone. It looked like he was out of the fight for awhile. I couldn't see Rosso anywhere. The zombie tossed the dirt bike off itself with amazing ease and hurried towards its sword. I ran towards it and made a heavy stroke to its chest. My sword got stuck between two ribs and the zombie backhanded me with incredible force. I had never been hit like that in my life. It was a shock, but it wasn't impossible to deal with like some part of me had been afraid it would be. My vision went blurry for a few seconds, but I held on to my sword and it pulled loose from the zombie as I fell to the ground.

The zombie found its sword and came back for me. I got up and traded several blows with the sword as it whirled around the zombie. The zombie tried to punch me a couple of times, but I was able to avoid the blows. It looked like a standoff until I tripped backwards on a flowerpot. I blocked one sword thrust while on the ground, but the zombie started kicking me in the ribs. I didn't know how I was going to get up. Then I saw Rosso push the zombie from behind with his pole and the undead creature fell on me. I got my sword up in time and it impaled itself through the chest. I turned on my side and jerked the sword out of its body as I twisted away and stood up.

Rosso was keeping the zombie sword busy with his pole, so I hacked at the zombie. A couple of strokes took an arm off. Another couple and most of its chest was caved in. Finally I took a leg off and green light flashed from the zombie's body and it was still. The zombie sword dropped to the ground while Rosso was swinging his pole at it and the counselor fell against a headstone and just leaned against it for a couple of minutes and breathed hard.

I was breathing a little hard too, but it was more from adrenaline that exhaustion. I had slain a monster. I had fulfilled my new purpose in life. It wasn't really what I wanted to be doing with my life, but it was better than doing nothing and then brooding all day about it.

Todhunter picked himself off the ground and asked how I was doing and then asked about Rosso. The Englishmen had small gash on the top of his scalp, but it didn't seem to bother him too much. We chopped the zombie into even smaller parts and then put them into plastic garbage bags and carried them back to the car. Todhunter and Rosso would come back another night to re-bury them in their rightful grave. I dragged the motorcycle out of the cemetery and into the woods and left it there. Then we drove back towards town.

They dropped me off at the end of my street and I snuck back into my room. The piece of tape I had put across the doorframe was still there, so no one had come in. I settled back into my bed and went to sleep. We hadn't found the master yet, but we had taken care of the zombie. It wouldn't hurt any more people. That thought made me sleep much easier.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8-August 25th 1981

The big news for the day is that we figured out who the zombie master was. It was Herbert, the sophomore who had performed inside the Norseman costume as the McKinley High mascot until he had hit his head while performing a routine last winter. He'd gotten a concussion and the doctor told him not to go to sleep for a few days, but he did fall asleep after the big basketball game with Lincoln. It was during that game that Nick broke up with me after learning from my mother that I was going to break up with him.

Anyway Herbert fell asleep and went into a coma for a couple of days. Neal, who'd taken over the mascot duties for the Lincoln game, told me that Herbert had never acted right after he woke up from the coma. He was distant and unfriendly. A couple of mornings ago his mother found him up in his treehouse. He had slipped into another coma.

Mr. Rosso went over to his house to console his mother the best he could. While he was there he managed to sneak a peek at Herbert's treehouse and room. Both were filled with voodoo shrines and spell books. Rosso pieced together the story that Herbert's late father had become obsessed with voodoo practices while working in Haiti in the sixties and his son has inherited that obsession after re-awakening from his first coma.

Herbet's mother and Sam both confirmed that Alan White had bullied the boy merciously for years. And Herbert had never forgotten. With Sam's knowledge that Herbert used to play Dungeons & Dragons with Harris Trinsky and Todhunter's knowledge that the "dancing sword" was indeed a voodoo spell, the last pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

Herbert's mental outlook had taken a turn for the dark after his initial coma. He got into voodoo and recently cast a spell to raise the motorcycle rider from the grave and then commanded it to use the dancing sword and kill Alan White. But it seems that Herbert hadn't had the best control over his zombie and it started haunting its grave. When I "killed" the zombie, the shock of the spell being broken must have done something to Herbert's already damaged brain.

My sense of satisfaction at protecting my fellow Chippewa residents from the zombie was now tempered by the knowledge that I was partly responsible for a classmate of mine being in a coma. Todhunter told me that acquaintances and sometimes even friends and family members of Slayers were victims of evil. Being Chosen was both a blessing and curse. But someone had to do it.

On a different, but still depressing note, I started school yesterday. The corridors of McKinley seem even stranger to me than before to me. The loud chatter and laughter assault my ears and I want to run away. I have to deal with annoying people like Mr. Snyder, the new home economics teacher. He's a short, balding man in his early twenties who gives off the air of a rodent, but talks like a bully. At least I can steal away a few minutes here and there with my friends during the day. Its all that's making life bearable at this point. Hopefully the days ahead will have some more cheerful things to report.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9-September 7th, 1981

Today was a normal day at school. In the hallway I saw Sam get a flat tire from one of the farm kids walking behind him. Mr. Rosso worked the halls before the first bell rang, not realizing most of the kids were making fun of him behind his back after he went to talk to the next student. After first period, we sat behind the stairway where Ken regaled us with his plans to set up an underground hydroponic pot farm after graduation. I was late for class and saw Todhunter, who was now working as a substitute teacher at McKinley one or two days a week, and Mr. Kowchevski having a kind of intimate looking discussion in the empty hallway. But then Kowchevski spotted me and shooed me into Mr. Synder's class.

We practiced sewing in home ec. Sometimes I feel like a traitor to the feminist cause, but I'm really getting into all this housewife stuff. But then from the time I got my first easy-bake oven, I've always liked to cook and make things for around the house. I guess I was my mother's daughter after all. It was just in the last couple of years that I became too cool to show it though.

Kim and I were sitting in the back of the classroom facing the rear wall and hemming up each leg of a pair of old pants when Synder started in on his "one day I'm going to be getting out of here" lecture. This was the second time he had given it, and way early in the school year for this kind of talk from teachers. He ranted about how he was taking more education courses so one day he could be a principal and he wouldn't have to deal with the hopeless task of trying to teach us anything. He would just have to worry about controlling our behavior. And he was also going to move to California to get away from the god-awful Michigan winters. He would get what he deserved in the land of plenty. Kim and I just hoped he would leave as soon as possible.

"So, how are things going with Rosso and Todhunter after school?" Kim asked. Snyder couldn't hear us over the hum of the sewing machines in the front of the room, so we didn't have to lower our voices. "Have they made a teacher sandwich out of you yet?"

"No-its not like that. And I just see Rosso because Todhunter is living at Rosso's mother's house right now."

"Whatever you say," Kim said with a smile on her face. "But I see how Rosso looks at you sometimes. It must kill him to have you so close and not be able to do anything about it. Maybe he'll be horny enough to get it on with Todhunter."

"Eww, you are so gross sometimes, Kim,"

"I just say what I see."

"Hey, how is it going with taking your mother to the doctor for her diabetes?" I asked, mostly to try and steer Kim onto another subject. Once she started talking about smut, it was hard to get her to stop.

"Its ok. My mom's getting better. We were scared there for awhile. Its not easy to admit, but I like doing it"

"How so?" I asked.

"Well its nice to be needed for something besides sex with Daniel. And I like taking care of her. She's super squeamish about needles, but I'm working with her so she can do her own injections when I'm not around. I feel like its bringing us together."

"That's good to hear."

"Yeah, but it feels kinda weird sometimes. I'm even starting to think about becoming a nurse after I graduate. Hell, even thinking about graduating is weird for me."

"That's great," I said. "But you know you have to go to nursing school for a couple of years to be an RN. And you'll have to raise your grades in order to get accepted." "Well screw that then," Kim said with a laugh.

After fourth period I ran into Millie in the halls and we talked as I got my books out of my locker.

"How is the tutoring going with Mr. Todhunter?" Millie asked.

"Great."

"What kind of stuff does he tutor you in?"

"A little of this, a little of that. Its challenging stuff. When I get home each evening, it really feels like I've had a workout," I said, trying not to lie to Millie.

"That sounds cool. You think there's any chance that he might be able to tutor me too? It would be so neat if we could study together like we used to."

"I'll ask him, but I think that grant only covers him working with one student at a time," I said with what sounded to me a weak tone of voice.

"I understand," Millie said with a sad look on her face. "I'm just glad you are taking your studies seriously again. It was such a big shock to hear about you skipping the academic summit."

"Well I had more interesting plans for the summer. I've learned that you have to take what you can in this life because you may not get any second chances."

"There are always second chances in heaven"

"Yeah," I said in neutral tone.

"Hey, do you think you're going to become a mathlete again? With your new attitude, I think we could convince Mr. Kowchevski to take you back."

"No, that's not part of my life anymore. I'm doing the tutoring because I have to, even though it is giving me more self-confidence," I said as the bell for third period rang.

"Okay, see you later," Millie said.

"Goodbye," I said. I felt crummy about telling Millie lies, even if they were white lies. But that was a price I paid for being the Slayer I guess.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10--September 19th, 1981

If staking my first vampire last week was anti-climatic, then staking my second and third vampires last night was a bit too climatic. I got the first vamp as he was rising out of a grave in a Detroit cemetery. We'd read in the newspaper about someone dying from a "neck puncture" and it was child's play to wait beside his grave for the rising and then dust him before he could even get his feet free. It may not have been sporting, but I'm not a big believer in taking chances.

The next two vamps came after me. And my friends. It all began in the football stadium as McKinley played the visiting Grosse Point High. Usually we wouldn't be caught dead at a school sporting event, but since Daniel, Ken, and Kim had gotten beaten up by those jerks from Lincoln last year, we'd all caught a little school spirit. Plus it would be fun to see those rich kids from Grosse Point get pounded on by our players.

And it was funny to see Neal do his Norsemen mascot routine. At first head cheerleader Vicki Appleby had been dead set against Neal donning the costume and big viking head again, but the principal, my dad, and several other prominent booster parents pressured her to take Neal back. They thought his performance at the Lincoln High basketball game last spring was the funniest thing they had ever seen. Bill even put a good word in with Vicki and finally she choose Neal as the mascot. Now he was playing air guitar and impaling himself with his plastic sword. I enjoyed it and didn't even mind too much when Neal did his routine next to me and sat on my lap, dipped my head, and made a kissing motion like some silent movie star. It looked like Neal was having a great time, but I knew he was hurting inside over his parent's recent divorce. It would be tough for him to only see his dad on Sundays.

McKinley was getting beat 28-7 at halftime, so we all decided to leave after seeing Amy play the tuba in the marching band's halftime show. We would get some beer and go to the clearing and hang out by the bonfire for awhile. There was this kinda good looking tall dark-haired kid smoking a joint and standing near Daniel's Trans-Am in the parking lot. He was listening to Ted Nugget on his car stereo and of course Ken and Nick got into a big conversation with the guy. Kim and I made small talk in her car for twenty minutes as the guys talked with the new guy. I knew Ken was recounting many of the forty-seven times he had seen Nugget play. Then Daniel came over and said we were heading for the store now and that the new guy would be following us.

So we got the beer and drove a few miles outside town to the clearing and then the guys went to gather some firewood while Kim and I got the ratty old lawn chairs from under the tarp beside the tree where we kept them. Ten minutes and a few squirts of lighter fluid later, we had a respectable fire going. We found out the new guy was named Martin Q. Blank, but he asked us to call him Marty. He was from Grosse Point, but turned out to be a cool person anyway, not some stuck-up rich kid.

We listened to some more Nugget on Daniel's car stereo and then some "Pink Floyd" and the obligatory "Led Zeppelin". Then Marty put in a cassette by this guy named Prince. The music was pretty good, but the singing and the lyrics would take some getting used to.

"Wow, this guy has a dirtier mind than me," Kim said.

"And that's saying a lot," Daniel said as he swigged his beer and then got punched in the shoulder by Kim.

"If you ask me, this guy's a sex maniac," Ken said.

"You have to listen to the meaning behind the words," Marty said. "He's just using sex a metaphor to talk about other things." "It sounds to me like he's using sex as a metaphor for more sex," I said.

"You know, I heard Tina Shields got it on with this guy the last time he played Detroit," Nick said.

"Tina Shields gets it on with at least one member of every band who plays around here," Kim said.

"That's true," Nick said. "I don't think this Prince guy is gonna go far."

"I have a feeling you are wrong," Marty said as he got in Daniel's car and put another cassette in. "But you're going to love this. A friend of mine got it from a guy who works at a radio station. It's a song by 'Queen' with guest vocals from David Bowie. Its called 'Under Pressure' and its not going to be released for another month or so."

We listened to the song and didn't say anything--it was like we were under a spell. It made me think of my duties as the Slayer. And somehow it made me feel better about them. Everyone was under some kind of pressure, no matter what they did. If others could deal with responsibility, then I could too. Life was scary sometimes, but you just had to deal with it the best you could.

The song ended and Nick immediately said, "Play that bad boy again!"

Marty rewound the cassette as a car came down the dirt road. He played the song again, this time with the volume turned down, as the car stopped and a man and a woman got out and walked towards the fire. They looked to be in their late teens or early twenties and were dressed in post-hippie clothes. Something about them gave me a bad vibe.

"Hola amigos," the man said. "Sorry to bust in, but we saw the fire from the highway. Can we join your party?"

"We usually like to keep our parties private, thank you," Kim said.

"No need to get snippy," the woman said.

"Let's keep everything civil," Daniel said. "Do you guys have anything to add to our little gathering?"

"No, we just want to take what you have," the man said as his face got all bumpy. The woman's face did the same thing. They were vampires!

"Get behind me," I said as I jumped up from my chair and pulled a stake out of an army jacket pocket.

"Oh, we have a professional here," said the woman.

"Leave us alone, you don't know who your dealing with," I said in with the best menacing tone I could muster up.

"Yeah, a bunch of scarred kids," the man said as he punched me in the face.

"Leave Lindsay alone!" Nick said as he rushed the man and got a face full of knuckles for his trouble.

"Let me handle them," I said as I kicked the man and then followed through with a couple of punches. The woman grabbed me from behind and the man punched me a couple of times before Daniel and Ken pulled her off me.

From there the fight devolved in a general melee for a few minutes. I got shoved to the ground several times and lost my stake. Marty and Daniel were keeping the man busy, but Ken and Nick were left moaning on the ground and the woman was leaning over Kim, trying to bite her. I pulled a one inch thick branch from the fire and then drove the sharp end through the woman's chest. She cried out in pain, but didn't dust. Damm, it was hard to hit the heart through the back. I pulled the stick out and then kicked the woman over so she was lying on the ground on her back. Then I plunged the stick in again and she dusted this time.

I heard the man scream, "Noooo!" and when I turned around to face him, he grabbed Daniel and Marty's arms and swung them together so that their heads collided. They collapsed to the ground and the man came running after me. I stepped to one side and swung my knee up to hit him in the groin as he passed by.

The man recovered quickly and then slid into my legs in a soccer-style tackle and knocked me to the ground. He grabbed my neck from behind, lifted me off the ground, and started to choke me. I tried to trip or flip him, but I couldn't get any leverage. Then I heard a solid "thunk"and the man let go of me and said, "Why you little..." as he turned around and punched Marty. The kid from Grosse Point had driven my stake into the man's back. He couldn't hit the heart either.

I pulled the stake from the man's back and then gave him a kick, jab, kick combo that left him staggering. It was ridiculously easy to stake and dust him after that. As I was fighting off a sneeze from the vamp dust, I saw Marty sit up and look at me very intensely.

We all had some cuts and bruises, but fortunately nothing serious. Nothing a cover story about getting into a fight with some Grosse Point jerks wouldn't explain. But I did have to explain about the vampires and who I was. I didn't hold anything back. I owed my friends that much and more. I knew in my heart they wouldn't have encountered any vampires if I hadn't become the Slayer.

They took the news pretty well, considering. Daniel accepted the idea of vampires the easiest, but Ken acted like it would take him awhile to really believe it. Kim was mad at me for keeping secrets from her, but I knew she would get over it. Nick was just kind of generally flustered, but Marty was quiet, although he kept giving me these calculating looks.

It was his idea to dump the vampire's car in a pond to get rid of the evidence. When we looked in it, we found purses, wallets, and other personal items the vampires must have taken from other people. It seems they had roamed all across the upper midwest, killing young victims. I took all the driver's licenses and other ID I could find. I was going to give them to Todhunter and hope that he and the Watchers could somehow let the families of the victims know that the murderers had been taken care of.

Marty said he would keep quiet about everything. We invited him to come back and hang around with us again, but he didn't seem too enthusiastic about it. Looking into his eyes, somehow I knew this experience had deeply affected him. I hoped he would be able to put it past him, but realized it probably would take him a long time to do that. Before he left, Marty gave me the "Queen" cassette.

Kim and I listened to "Under Pressure" on her boombox on the way home. I felt bittersweet when I got out of the car at the end of my block and said goodbye to her. I was going to have to stop hanging out with my friends. The Slayer attracted trouble and I didn't want my friends to get hurt in the fallout. It was going to make my life a lot harder, but it was something I had to do.

&&&&

Author's Note: Martin "Marty" Q. Blank is the character John Cusak played in the movie "Grosse Pointe Blank" about an assassin attending his ten year high school reunion. I've moved him back from the class of 1986 to the class of 1984 to fit the story. It's also the proper class for people born in 1966 like John Cusak. In the film, Marty seems to have a moment of great insight as he listens to "Under Pressure" at his reunion dance.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11-October 13rd, 1981

It has taken me several days to get over my sadness enough to write this journal entry. I tried to stay away from my friends and one of them still got hurt. There's no justice in this world. The dark forces are beginning to close in on me. The vampire I dusted while on patrol at the Chippewa cemetery last week was just a harbinger of things to come.

It all started innocently enough with a flyer that Nick saw at the local music store a couple of weeks ago. "Spinal Tap" was opening up for Bob Seeger at the start of his fall tour in Detroit and the British metal band needed a drummer. Nick felt pretty good about his drumming skills and went to the audition. He was the first one to show up and to audition and "Spinal Tap" hired him. They said he was very punctual.

We all felt so proud for him. Things never seemed to go his way, but now they were. I relaxed my "no hanging out with friends" policy a little bit to talk with the gang in the halls between classes. I gave Nick a big hug-I was so happy for him. As I was doing that, I saw his ex-girlfriend Sara giving him a dirty look. She was talking to this new girl in school named Anya and when I walked past them on the way to class, I heard Sara say, "Oh, I hope that Nick becomes a big flash in the pan-that's what he deserves for abandoning me and disco."

I didn't plan on going to the concert to see Nick play, but Kim talked to Rosso and Rosso talked to my parents and said he would chaperone the group and that I needed to go see my friend Nick hit the big time. My parents and everyone else was pressuring me, so I agreed to go to the concert. What were the chances of vampires attacking in a public place like that?

So we all piled into Rosso's mother's car and went to the concert. I was just looking around at the crowd and listening to the warm-up music when Rosso said, "I bet you don't know this, but Bob Seeger is a werewolf."

"What? Get out of town," Ken said.

"No, its true-it's a well known fact among Watchers," Rosso said. "Why do you think he has such a bushy beard and never plays on the night of a full moon?"

"Next you'll be telling us Keith Richards is zombie," Daniel said as he scratched his chin with the rolled up souvenir program Rosso had bought for us.

"I don't have hard evidence for that, but I wouldn't doubt it," Rosso said with a thoughtful expression on his face.

Just then I spotted Sara and that girl Anya in the section to the left of us. Anya was wearing some kind of amulet on a chain around her neck. For some reason I couldn't take my eyes off her. I'd thought about striking up a conversation with her a couple of times in the hallway, but she always seemed to turn away and go somewhere else when she saw me coming. It was like she didn't want to talk with me.

Then the house lights dimmed and "Spinal Tap" took the stage and played "Big Bottom." I'd listened to some of their albums when I started hanging out in Nick's basement again the last few days. The band was very loud, but their lyrics were even dirtier and more crude than Prince's. I liked their old "Listen to me--the flower people" period music a lot better than their present metal sound. But they were a professional band and Nick was playing with them.

He looked like he was having so much fun on the stage. He had big drum kit-no 29 piecer, but still pretty darn big. And it sounded like he was keeping up and playing great. We were all cheering like crazy for Nick.

I took my eyes off him for a second and looked back over at Sara and Anya. Sara was now wearing Anya's amulet and saying something and I swore that I saw Anya change into some kind of veiny monster and nod her head empathetically and say a word. At that moment I heard an explosion and a giant gasp from the audience.

I looked back at the drum pit and couldn't see Nick. Several pieces of his drum kit were knocked over or on fire. The house lights came up and a curtain came down over the stage. I had a really bad feeling about what had happened. I looked back over at Sara who was screaming and crying and saw that Anya was nowhere to be found.

Despite our growing panic, I learned that Rosso, Daniel, Ken, Amy, and Kim had seen Nick explode in a flash of light. We tried desperately to get backstage and see what was going on, but security wouldn't let us get past. They finally told us which hospital Nick was being taken to, and we called Nick's parents and then went to the hospital.

We waited at the hospital until his parents got there and then the doctor came out and told them that Nick had sustained some kind of massive electrical shock. His body had been knocked ten feet backstage. He had been killed instantly. We cried and hugged and did everything else that grieving people do. It was the worst night of my life since my grandmother died.

Later I told Todhunter everything I knew about Anya. No one saw her after Nick died. Sara said that she had made a horrible wish about Nick and then Anya had said the word, "done" right before he died. We looked for the amulet, but it seemed to have disappeared soon after the explosion. Rosso checked the school records and found out where Anya lived. We went to the address listed and the house was empty. Anya had lived there for about a week, but none of the neighbors had ever seen her parents and the house had been rented over the phone. Rosso called her old schools and they found records for her attendance, but no one could ever recall actually seeing her.

The trail seems to end there. Todhunter and Rosso are convinced Anya is some kind of demon or mystic, but we don't know what kind or how to find her, especially since Todhunter only has a fraction of his Watcher books with him. He's going to turn the information over to the Council and see what they can discover.

Today we had Nick's funeral. The whole school and much of the town turned out. It was beautiful in its own way, although we had a hard time getting Sam to come and he did keep looking nervously at the funeral director. I feel so numb. I know in my heart that Anya was attracted to the mystical energy of the Slayer. Although she didn't seem to want to face me openly, she has hurt me and my friends. I doubt we'll ever be able to find her and that tears me up inside. I want some justice for Nick. He deserves that and so much more.

&&&&

Author's Note-If you haven't seen the "This is Spinal Tap" movie then you don't know about the fictitious band and their penchant for losing drummers to spontaneous combustion and other weird accidents.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12-October 31st, 1981

I suspect today was another turning point in my life, and not because of the Halloween Dance at school. I 'd managed to blow off the Homecoming Dance this year, but Todhunter, Rosso, and Mr. Synder conspired to ruin my Halloween by making me dress up in a costume and serve refreshments at the dance.

For the last couple of weeks our big project in home ec was to make Halloween costumes. Of course on the day we actually picked what costumes we were going to make, I had faked being sick and skipped school after staying out all night waiting for a very tardy rising vamp. Therefore Kim got to the make the costume decision for us two and she chose "Scooby Doo." Naturally she got to be Daphne and I was stuck with Velma. I should have figured she would have done that considering how much she and Daniel liked to get stoned and watch the cartoon.

So anyway we're stuck making the two costumes and then Kim blabs her big mouth to Rosso and he talks to Todhunter and is reminded that Halloween is the one night of the year when the real ghouls and goblins stay away. Pretty soon we are committed to making costumes for the whole Scooby gang and getting our whole gang shanghaied into coming to the dance. Rosso thought it would be a good way for us to take our minds off Nick. And Synder insisted that Kim and I work the refreshment table to make up for all the talking we did in class.

Naturally as soon as mom found out about the costumes, she insisted that we all come over to our house and take a picture before we go to the dance. So now there's a picture showing me as Velma, Kim as Daphne, Ken as Fred, Daniel as Shaggy, and Bill Haverchuck as Scooby. Mom will probably frame it and put it on the wall next to my "Star Trek" portrait.

So we left Count Harold and the Cowgirl at home to hand out candy and went to the dance. Where we were coerced by Sam into posing for another group picture--this time for the yearbook. Sam had joined the yearbook staff last year in order to spend time with Cindy Sanders, but like a sap he had stayed on it even after he broke up with her. He teased Bill by saying he should have dressed up as Daphne instead of Scooby. Considering that Bill had gone as the Bionic Women last year-with no one forcing him to do it-I think Bill might have chosen a girl's costume if he'd had a say so in the matter.

Then I had the thought that Nick would have been Scooby in a better world, one where he didn't have to die. That depressing line of reasoning got me thinking that I had about as much chance of ever being with a man as Velma did. At least she was probably a lesbian where I was just uptight, and the Slayer to boot.

When I dated Nick I didn't want to have sex. But if I had it to do all over again knowing then what I know now, I would probably go all the way. And not just because Nick had died. I'd always been afraid of intimacy, been afraid of exposing myself to strong emotions. But since becoming the Slayer I had engaged in life-or-death struggles and that had made me loosen up a little bit. If I could totally lose myself in the moment to fight a vampire, then I could probably unwind enough to do the deed with a guy. I just needed to find a guy I liked-fat chance of that ever happening though.

Neal kept getting punch from me, even though I knew it was impossible for him to drink wearing the big norseman mascot head. I saw Bill dancing with Vicki Appleby. I knew she would never do that if his face wasn't obscured by the Scooby head he was wearing. Ken and Amy and Daniel and Kim looked like they were having a good time dancing, despite bitching all week about having to attend. Todhunter sat in a far corner of gym and just took in everything. When there was a slow moment at the table, I talked with Rosso.

"So have you heard anything from the Council about Anya?" I asked.

"Todhunter has talked to a man named Travers who says their research hasn't borne any fruit yet, but Todhunter knows that man is better at politics than anything else. He's going to try and track down Merrick. If anyone can figure out a way to find Anya, its Merrick. He can be a very blunt and humorless man, but he's a great Watcher."

At that moment "Come Sail Away" started playing over the sound system and Eli came over and whisked me away to the dance floor. I barely had time to hand off the punch ladle to Rosso before I started dancing with Eli. At first we slow danced, then we separated a little once the tempo picked up in the middle of the song. Last year I had been so stupid to see Eli as retarded instead of special. He makes the best of what he has. I'm starting to understand how important that is. For the first time all night, I felt happy.

That was when I saw the vampire. Everyone was oohing and ahhing over how great the guy's costume was. If they only knew. He and I exchanged the traditional Slayer-Vampire look and then he cocked his head towards the door and started walking. I muttered an apology to Eli, ran back over to the table, grabbed my army jacket, and hurried out the door.

I followed the vampire to the back of the gym where he stopped and waited for me. "I thought you guys believed Halloween was too tacky to be out and about," I said. I was trying to work on my pre-fight banter.

"Ah yes, ordinarily we wouldn't leave our crypts on this night, but I've already wasted enough time looking for you," A tall, well-built man with long red hair and wearing eighteenth--century style clothes said as he walked out of the shadows.

I got goosebumps all over. It was Lothos. Todhunter had told me about him after I described the vampire from several of the many dreams I had where Slayers got killed. This vampire had been around since the eleventh or twelfth century and spent most of his time hunting down and killing Slayers. The rest of the time he spent in slumber, attended to by his minions. Due to my encounter with Spike and Drusilla and several disappearances reported in the area in the last week, Todhunter had a suspicion that Lothos would be coming after me. Very few Slayers had ever seen him and lived. None had defeated him.

"I can tell by the fear in your eyes that you know who I am," Lothos said with his melodic voice.

"Not fear, just revulsion."

"You'll find me much more pleasant in awhile. Sorry for the delay in finding you, but you are one of the few Slayers I can't seek out with my own resources. I had to rely on information from that dimwit Spike. He found your name and the name of your school, but neglected to find out which city or even which state you lived in. I had to sire several private investigators and librarians to locate you."

"I'm sorry you had to go to so much trouble just for me," I said. It was a pretty lame comeback, but the best I could think of. I was scared, more scared than I had ever been in my life. I needed to control that fear. If I didn't, then I would surely die tonight. I knew I shouldn't let him keep talking, but I couldn't bring myself to land the first blow.

"I've lived for a millennium and killed dozens of Slayers. What's a few months compared to all that," he said as he looked past me.

I heard the sound of footsteps behind me. Somehow I could tell they were human, so I didn't turn around to look.

"Lindsay, are you okay?" Kim asked as she, Ken, Daniel, Rosso, and Todhunter gathered behind me.

"I'm fine, I was just talking to my friend Lothos here," I said. I so didn't want them here, but I didn't want to show how anxious I was.

"I was wondering when you would show up," Todhunter said.

"I can tell by your stink that you are her Watcher. I may let you live so that you can tell this tale to your next Slayer," Lothos said.

"Kim what are you doing here?" asked a figure that stepped out of the darkness behind Lothos.

"Chip is that you?" Kim asked.

"Yes, its me little sister. Lothos has made me a new man," Chip said as he put his vampire face on.

"What have you done to him, you monster!" Kim shrieked as she tried to run to Lothos. Daniel caught her in his arms before she could take more than a couple of steps. Chip had been missing this past week, but Kim just assumed it was like all the other times he disappeared. He had a bad drug problem, which was made even worse by the lingering after effects of a beating he had gotten from the police a couple of years ago. Kim was always worried Chip would get into bad trouble. Now he was in the worst trouble imaginable.

"Your sister is friends with the Slayer? Why didn't you tell me that?" Lothos asked Chip in a withering tone of voice.

"I'm sorry master. I didn't know she was the Slayer. In fact I barely remember seeing her at all. I told you I've been out of it for a long time now," Chip said as his body cringed away from Lothos.

"I'm surrounded by incompetents. But no matter, it shall be over soon," Lothos said.

"Yeah Lindsay's going to be dusting your fop ass in a couple of minutes," Daniel said.

"I think not," Lothos said as he looked deeply into my eyes and said, "Your life is not a blink of my eye, not a single breath. I have lived in the shadows, in the......"

Lothos was interrupted by Todhunter, who took out his cruxifix and ran towards the vampire shouting, "Stop, you fiend." Lothos knocked the cross from Todhunter's hand and then drove him against the brick wall and kneed him in the small of the back. Todhunter crumbled to the ground. He looked dead, but he had saved my life. Lothos put me under his spell with his words. I would have been an easy kill.

"Bah, enough of this-another time Slayer," Lothos said as he turned around, flared his cape in a dramatic manner, and walked back into the shadows. Rosso and Ken went over to check on Todhunter and I tried to follow Lothos. But the vampire from the dance blocked the way. I was so angry from my pent-up fear and my helplessness and at seeing Todhunter get hurt that the vampire didn't stand a chance. I buried Nick's drumstick deep within his chest. But he did delay me long enough for Lothos to get away. Chip also disappeared. Kim sat with her back against the gym wall and sobbed as Daniel tried to comfort her.

Ken called an ambulance and we all went to the hospital. Todhunter lived, but he might never walk again. Just one more thing Lothos needed to be held accountable for.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13–November 1st, 1981

The next afternoon Rosso, Ken, Kim, Daniel, and myself met in Todhunter's hospital room. The Watcher hadn't required surgery and could wiggle his big toe now, which was a good sign. But he still had a lot of recovering to do and there was still no guarantee he would ever regain the full use of his lower body.

"What are we gonna do, that thing is gonna pick us and our families off one by one," Daniel said as he plucked a daisy from the flower arrangement we'd brought for Todhunter.

"We kill the son of a bitch, that's what we do," Kim said with a steely look in her eyes. She had stopped crying earlier in the day. Now she was angry.

"Yeah but we gotta find him first," Ken said.

"And figure out some way to protect our families in the meantime," Daniel said as he unwrapped one of the bars of band candy Amy had sent for Todhunter.

"Well if we instruct our loved ones not to go out after dark and not to invite anyone into their home, that will provide some protection," Rosso said.

"Not necessarily," Todhunter said as he sat up in the bed with a groan. "Lothos has been known to set fire to the abodes of those trying to hide from him."

"Well shit, what are we gonna do?" Ken asked.

"We're going to burn him out," I said with conviction. As soon as I heard the word "fire" something in my head screamed that was the answer. "Mr. Todhunter, is there any way we can find his hideout?"

"Well there is a spell invoking the godess Thespia that can locate demons, but I've never been the primary in casting it and I surely can't do the spell alone. Perhaps if we all do the spell together, there's a chance it might work."

"That's good enough. What do you need?" I asked.

"Well certain herbs and..."

"If you need herbs, then I'm your man," Daniel said as he put the daisey back in the vase.

Todhunter made a list of the ingredients needed and Daniel and I went out to get them while everyone else waited in the hospital. Rosso was calling our parents with a bogus story about violent con artists working the area and how no one should be invited inside a house or go out after dark until the fiends were driven from town. Rosso would also spread the story at school tomorrow. It would sound believable coming from him since his brother-in-law was a cop.

Between a gourmet speciality store in Grosse Point and Daniel's weed connections, we managed to get all the stuff needed for the demon locating spell and also a spell to turn Todhunter's hospital room into a residence except for a special breed of mushroom. In desperation I suggested we check with Millie's psycho ex-convict cousin, who had provided us with fake IDs last year. Toby was still slimey and tried to hit on me again, but I lost my patience and pulled his arm behind his back and slammed his face down on a table. After that he was much more amiable and produced the type of mushroom we needed and didn't even mind when we couldn't pay him full price because our money had run out.

Riding in the car, Daniel said, "You remember the first time we really talked?"

"Yeah, you were standing outside the 7-Eleven smoking a cigarette," I said.

"And you wanted to try it. Man, I never saw anyone choke so much on their first cig," Daniel said with a small laugh as he batted around the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror.

"Those things don't agree with me."

"I'm glad of that. You aren't that kind of girl," He said.

"Well thanks for realizing that and still wanting me to hang around with you. I don't know what I would do if you guys weren't so supportive. All this Slayer crap is above and beyond the call of duty."

"Nothing is beyond friendship and don't you forget that," he said.

We went back to the hospital and Rosso prepared the ingredients under Todhunter's direction. When it was ready, we formed a circle around the hospital bed and joined hands. Todhunter started a series of incantations that began with the words, "Thespia, we walk in shadow, walk in blindness. You are the protector of the night." After we finished, white mist began to appear over the map of Chippewa that was laid in the middle of the circle we had formed. All of the mist was concentrated on an area at the outskirts of town.

"There seems to be about a dozen demons–specifically vampires-- in town," Todhunter said as he gasped for air. Obviously the spell had taken a lot out of him. "Does anyone know what kind of buildings are located in this vicinity?"

"It's an abandoned warehouse," I said. "Sam and his friends shoot off model rockets there sometimes."

"I'm sure that's the lair. How many exits does it have?" Todhunter asked.

"I'll have to double-check with Sam, but I think only two."

"Then your plan to smoke out Lothos may work after all," Todhunter said as he laid back in the bed and closed his eyes for a minute.

Shortly after that, Kim, Ken, Daniel, and myself went home to try and keep our families safe. Rosso stayed behind to help with the spell that would keep vampires out of the hospital room unless they had an invite. Despite my protestations that I could handle it alone, we agreed to meet near the warehouse a half-hour before sunrise. I just hoped we could make it through the night without losing more loved ones to the vampire.


	14. Chapter 14

1Chapter 14–November 2nd, 1981.

We all survived the night, although Kim and her mother and step-father had a close call. A couple of hours after sundown Chip came by the house and tried to get in. Fortunately an hour earlier Kim had told her mother about every rotten thing she had ever seen Chip do. Her mother was so mad there was no way she was going to let Chip in the house. She was so mad in fact that Kim had to restrain her from going out in the yard after her son.

As we gathered in a clearing a couple of hundred yards away from the warehouse, I could tell it had hurt Kim to say those things about Chip, but she might have to do worse before the morning was over. We met so far from the lair because Todhunter had warned us about the acuity of vampire hearing. Rosso brought two pressurized spray cans that smelled of the insecticide they usually held. Now they were full of gasoline. He also brought his brother-in-law's shotgun. He didn't want to use it, so he gave it to Ken.

We sat in silence as we waited for the sun to come up. It was going to be a beautiful, clear fall day. Two minutes after the time of sunrise according to the morning newspaper, Rosso looked at me and I nodded. We walked to the warehouse and broke into two groups as we got close. Daniel, Ken, and Rosso would cover the front door and Kim and I would cover the loading dock exit. Rosso and Kim sprayed gasoline around the perimeter of the warehouse. When the cans were empty I gave the signal and everyone except for me and Ken lit up rolled up newspaper pages and threw them against the walls.

Within a couple of minutes the warehouse was blazing. I stood at a corner so I could see both the loading dock and the front door. A vampire rushed out the other door with a blanket over its head and Ken shot it in the kneecap and Daniel ripped the blanket away as it fell to its knees. Exposed to the sunlight, it quicky caught fire and burned up.

A few seconds later I heard the loading dock door open and two vampires came out. The area close to the door was still in shadow so I rushed one of the vampires, got it in a bear hug and dragged it out into the sunlight. It got one of its arms free and started bashing me in the face, but it was soon toast as I dragged it to the light. I looked around for the other vampire and saw Kim backing away from Chip.

"Why did you tell mom all those hateful things about me?" He screamed at her.

"Because it kept you out of the house. And they were true," Kim said as she backed into the sunlight.

"You're just like the rest of them–you never loved me," Chip said as I snuck up behind him and pulled the blanket from his hands. He burned to a crisp in seconds.

"I loved you more than you'll ever know," Kim said as she started crying.

I looked back towards the other door and saw Rosso tear a blanket away from another hobbled vampire. I hugged Kim as we watched the building burn until we heard the sirens of the fire trucks coming. It was obvious no more vampires were coming out, so we collected the spray cans and ran back to the cars.

We wanted to skip school. But Rosso said we had to go, even if it was Monday and we had just cleared out a vampire nest. Kim stopped crying as we reached school, but acted numb all day. I talked with Daniel and Ken and found out they had taken care of three vampires. I hoped the other half-dozen had burned up in the fire, but I found it odd that Lothos hadn't come out fighting. I resolved to be careful until we were more certain that he was dead. Between second and third period, I went to Rosso's office and told him that we should meet in the hospital again this evening and do another demon locating spell. He agreed that it was a good idea. I had really wanted to do it this morning, but Todhunter had said the spell could only be done once every twenty-six hours in a specific area.

I was about to walk out Rosso's door when I turned around and hugged him. I didn't say anything, just held him. It felt good, better than I had ever felt in any man's arms. Then I let go and left without looking at him. Just what I need–confused feelings about Rosso on top of everything else.

It seemed to take an eternity, but the final bell eventually rang. As I was walking towards Kim's car, I spotted Millie getting on her bus. She must have felt me looking at her because she turned around, spotted me, and waved. I waved back.

As I sit here in my room writing this entry and listening to "American Beauty," I'm remembering all the good times I've had with my family and friends. I can't feel the same pure joy listening to the album now as I did before, but at least I also feel like my recent experiences are letting me find new things to appreciate. I want to get Lothos past me so I can try to have a normal life again. I probably won't say much at dinner tonight, but I will listen to what mom and dad and Sam say. There's so much that can go wrong with life that you have to savor what feels good. Its ironic that seeing so much death has made me appreciate life more than ever. I've come to realize that Slayers are stuck in an endless cycle of violence and death. Something needs to be done to break that cycle.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15–November 20th 1981

Watcher's Comments

Lindsay is dead. As we feared, Lothos didn't die in the fire. He and five of his minions attacked her, Rosso, and Ken in the parking lot as they were on their way to the meeting in my hospital room. Kim and Daniel were already up here and we were going to perform another locating spell.

From what Ken says, Lindsay gave a good account of herself. Here is the information he related to me.

The three of them were laughing about something Ken can't remember now when Lothos stepped out of the shadows around the corner from the emergency room entrance. His clothes and those of the other vampires were covered in slime.

"I guess you didn't die in the fire after all," Lindsay stated.

"Did you think I would chose a lair without some kind of underground egress?" Lothos said.

"From the shit on your clothes it looks like you had to crawl down a sewage tunnel."

"Its all part of the earth in which I take my occasional slumbers. New clothes can found."

While Lothos was talking, Lindsay told Ken and Rosso, "When the fighting starts, you two run–I mean it!"

"Do not fret, I will allow one of them to live to tell the tale," Lothos said. "I suppose it will be the one who fights the worst or runs the fastest."

"Let's cut the crap and finish this," Lindsay said as she walked closer and delivered an upper-cut that knocked Lothos off his feet. The other vampires dog-piled Lindsay and Ken and Rosso immediately waded into the pile and tried to get them off of her. She staked one of them while she was on the ground and then threw two vampires off her as she got to her feet.

Ken was pre-occupied with helping Rosso fight a female vamp for several minutes, but he occasionally caught glimpses of Lindsay fighting the minion vampires. She was taking a lot of punishment but managed to stake four of the vampires before she went after the female the two men had been fighting.

Ken was struggling to catch his breath and looking around for Lothos when he heard Rosso's neck snap. He turned around as the counselor's body slumped to the ground and Lothos kicked him in the kneecap. He felt it shatter and writhed on the ground in agony. When he could concentrate again, he saw Lindsay and the Master Vampire trading punishing blows. Lothos delivered several in a row and Lindsay was about to fall over when a security guard from the hospital tried to stop the fight. Lothos walked towards the man, took three slugs in the chest but was still able to stagger to him and crush the guard's windpipe.

Ken saw Lindsay's stake lying on the ground and crawled several feet to it and threw it to her while Lothos was killing the guard. She composed herself and ran towards the vampire with the obvious intention of staking him in the back when he twisted to the side and bent over and Lindsay went flying over him.

She managed to hold onto the stake and used it to slash the vampire's face and arms as the two struggled at close range. But Lothos connected solidly with her solar plexus and then drove his elbow against the side of Lindsay's head as she was doubled over. She fell to the ground. Her neck was broken.

The vampire picked up her stake and placed it on her chest as he staggered off into the shadows as police sirens drew closer. Ken doesn't mind admitting that he cried like a baby. He feels guilty for having survived. Amy and myself are trying to comfort him as best we can. I suspect that helping him, Kim, and Daniel deal with their loss will be a big part of my job as McKinley's new guidance counselor. I am now able to walk with the assistance of a cane.

I have given notice to the Council. Writing this entry is my last official act. I have also informed them that I'm gay. That should quash any ideas they have about bringing me back into the fold. I can't watch any more Slayers–any more young girls die. Rosso may have been a joke back in England, but he died as well as any Watcher ever has and I suspect his idea of helping teenagers learn how to live is better than teaching young girls how to kill and die. Hopefully I will be able to settle down with Frank Kowchevski and have as happy a life as is possible given the circumstances.

Daniel retrieved this diary for me during the post-funeral gathering at Lindsay's house. I wish I could shout from the mountaintops what a good person and Slayer she was, but perhaps some future generation will know the truth. She was right–the cycle has to be broken.

–Brian Todhunter


	16. Epilogue and Story Notes

1Epilogue–October 9th, 2000

Slayer's Comments

I feel both sad and proud reading this diary. Sad because another girl was killed, but proud because a Slayer did her duty. In fact Lindsay saved my life. Of all the previous Slayers, she was the one I dreamed about the most before I was Chosen. Even though she was ambushed at the end, she hurt Lothos worse than any other Slayer I ever dreamed about. I knew Lindsay was right to use fire against him. It was she who ultimately gave me the idea to defeat him with the flame from an aerosol spray can.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to her friends and Watchers. Without seeing their devotion in my dreams, I might have rejected the friendship and assistance of Willow, Xander, and Giles. If my accomplishments mean anything, its because of those who have come before and those who stand beside me. As I re-dedicate myself to my Slayer training, it becomes more important than ever to realize this. Lindsay Weir I salute you, wherever you may rest.

–Buffy Summers.

&&&&

Author's Notes to explain references to things not included in the original "Buffy" and "Freaks and Geeks" episode airings:

–Brian Todhunter also appears in my "Alien Apocalypse" story. The Todhunter in this story has the same background and personality as the one in the other story, but this Todhunter has a divergent history after his first Slayer is killed several months before this story begins.

–Apparently a turned Slayer appears in one of the Buffy comics from Dark Horse and there are some scenes from the tv show that hint it may be possible, but for this story I chose for it not to be possible.

–Eugene the Disco Magician as a pornstar: I did an imdb search for the actor who played Eugene and several porn movie appearances were credited to him. It could be a case of two different people with the same name, but I thought Eugene the Porno Disco Magician would be funny.

–The Weir family portraits done by a "Star Trek" artist: Linda Cardellini on the "Freaks and Geeks" DVD commentary said she didn't like her picture because it looked like something from "Star Trek."

–Bill's story about the dirt bike rider who gets beheaded by a length of wire strung across someone's land comes from a deleted scene in one of the "F&G" episodes. This is an urban legend because I heard essentially the same thing on the other side of the country in the late 70s.

–Rosso living with his mother: An early episode showed him driving his mother's car. Add in the fact that he only gets paid twelve grand year and its not a great stretch of the imagination to conclude that he lives with his mother.

–Kim breaks up with Daniel right before going on the Dead tour. This was suggested by Paul Feig and/or Judd Appatow on the DVD commentary for "Discos and Dragons" along with the idea that some hippies would get lucky in the van.

–Rosso's brother-in-law Rick is a cop: This was taken from the "Mr. Rosso's Handbook" page on the freaksandgeeks dot com official website. Rosso's sister is named Jessica.

–Ken Miller talks about his dream of having an underground hydroponic pot farm in the audition tape for Seth Rogan included on the "F&G" standard DVD set.

–Kim taking care of her diabetic mother and talking about becoming a nurse comes from the "F&G" bible on the official site.

–Tina Shields is a character that appears in the "Freaks and Geeks" bible that's on the official "F&G" website. She roamed the Detroit area rock clubs and slept with all the musicians she could.

–Teacher Frank Kowchevski is gay: This was established in a deleted scene in the episode where Ken finds out Amy is a hermaphrodite.

–So far the main connections I've discovered between "BtVS" and "Freaks and Geeks" are actress Sarah Hagan who played Potential Amanda on "Buffy" and Millie Kenter on "F&G" and Rebecca Kirshner who wrote for both shows. Also Jack Conley plaed Kim Kelly's stepfather on "F&G" and Sahjhan on "Angel." And Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy) and Linda Cardellini (Lindsay) worked together in the "Scooby Doo" movies. Ms. Cardellini played Velma.

–Sam gets nervous looking at the funeral director because he got creeped out talking with the man when he was trying to sell yearbook ads with Cindy Sanders. This was a deleted scene included on the "F&G" DVD.

–Lindsay talking with Daniel for the first time outside the 7-Eleven is taken from the "F&G" bible.

–All the details about Lothos are taken from the Dark Horse Buffy comic books: "The Origin 1-3" and NOT from the original Buffy movie.


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